


ashes and dust

by skuls



Series: X Files Rewatch Series [27]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s08e15 DeadAlive, Episode: s08e16 Three Words, F/M, it's an explanation of how m&s resolved s8 tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 02:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14761034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: The days following Mulder’s resurrection.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this fic came largely as a result of wanting to understand mulder and scully in this part of mulder’s abduction arc/wanting to resolve all that onscreen tension. turns out that three words is awkward and hard, and this is way longer than i ever would’ve expected. 
> 
> this fic contains several references to auld acquaintance and sort-of references to encephalon (encephalon is not canon compliant whereas AA is, but i like to think parts of encephalon are rooted in canon). it is not necessary to have read either of those fics to read this one. i borrowed several scenarios and dialogue exchanges from other s8 fics i’ve done (because i liked them) and altered them according to the story. any resemblance to other late s8 fics is not intentional, and is probably due to the fact that three words fix it fics are one of my favorite kind. i tried to make this one my own, but if there is any resemblance to existing fics, i do apologize.
> 
> warning for discussions of death and mulder’s trauma.

Mulder is alive, and the idea is absolutely dizzying to Scully. Incredible and impossible. She prayed for a miracle and somehow received two.

She still can't believe she has him back. It’s taken her nearly eight years to believe in the impossible, and it’s still easy to revert to old habits. She believed for Mulder when it  _ seemed _ vital, when it was imperative that if he couldn’t be there that someone else be there to fit his role, to take his place (at least in terms of the Files), but she didn’t believe when it was really, truly vital, when it was life or death. She never imagined him coming back from the dead, always thought it was impossible. If she ever imagined them raising the baby together, she imagined a reality where he never left and her life didn’t crumble to dust. 

Six months without him and it still feels as if she has lost a vital organ, like she can't quite breathe. She still feels short of breath even now, sitting here beside him. She can hear the beeps of the heart monitor, his chest rising up and down. It feels unreal that he is here, alive, breathing. She felt his heart beat under her cheek earlier as her tears fell onto his hospital gown, she knows it is real. But she almost can't believe it, still. She reaches up and takes his hand, being careful of the wires taped to the back. His fingers are warm. She rubs her thumb over his last two fingers as she watches him breathe. And then his hand moves under hers.

She gasps a little in astonishment, drawing as close as she can get to him without leaving the chair. His head is moving against the pillow as he starts to awaken. Tears are welling in her eyes. He's here, he's really here. “Mulder,” she whispers gently. 

He opens his eyes slowly, licks his lips and turns his head to look at her. 

Her fingers tighten around his in a desperate sort of way. “Hi,” she whispers tremulously. 

Confusion flickers over his face, and he answers in a voice dull from disuse, “Who are you?”

Shock ripples through her in waves; she struggles to keep from sobbing full-on as a tear trickles down her face. Not this, not after all they've been through. This just feels like another cruel way of losing him. She's about to say something—whether it's a prayer, a plea, she doesn't know—when he smiles, just a little, showing his bluff.

“Oh my god,” she gasps, tearful laughter in her voice. She'd hate him for that, except she's too relieved, she never thought he'd prank her again. She never thought she'd even hear his voice again. “Don't do that to me.”

He's looking at her in the way he has a thousand times, in the way she’d though he never would again: like she is everything in the world, the only thing that matters. She'd missed him more than he can put into words. If only she could have saved him sooner, if only he hadn't been put through… “Do you know…?” she whispers, because at this point, she thinks it would be a blessing not to. She used to hate being unable to remember hers, but she's seen the abductees, the things she was unable to save him from. “Do you have any idea what you've been through?”

“Only what I see in your face,” he says. 

She squeezes his hand, reaches up with her free hand and strokes the hair away from his face. She can't stop touching him, doesn't think she'll ever be able to. He's looking up at her and he mouths something. Something that looks like,  _ I love you.  _

Her stomach twists; the corners of her mouth lift up in a smile. She can't remember the last time she's heard him say that. November of 1998, she thinks, maybe. And she knows she's never said it to him. It was one of her biggest regrets, after she lost him. She blinks back more tears, leans down to bury her face in his shoulder. She rests her cheek flat against it, adjusting herself for comfort and squeezing his hand again. She never wants to move, if she can help it.

Mulder's chin brushes the top of her head as he turns his head towards her, whispers, “Anybody miss me?” She laughs waterily, turns her head to kiss his shoulder before pressing her cheek to his chest again. Everything feels so still; she can hear his heart beating.

Across the room, the door opens. Scully looks up, expecting to see the nurse, and finds Agent Doggett instead. He stands there awkwardly, mouth hanging open like he wants to ask a question. She says nothing, only looks at him and hopes he'll understand. He seems to; he turns and retreats back into the hall, closing the door behind him. Scully lowers her head again. Mulder's nose brushes over her hair; her hands balled into fists on his chest, she closes her eyes and listens to him breathe. 

\---

Mulder dozes in and out of consciousness, his mind foggy. It's impossible to ground himself to one moment. He's having faint memories of pain, tight spaces and pitch-black and blades cutting into his chest; he presses his lips together hard to keep from crying out. Scully the day he left for Oregon, when he'd kissed her in the doorway, her eyes puffy and red and her trying like hell to hide it. She's wearing her cross, the one she'd given him before he left, and he has no idea how she'd gotten it, but that doesn't matter. She's  _ here _ . She's here and showing no signs of leaving. When he wakes for the second time, he finds her still leaning against him, sitting in the chair with her cheek against his shoulder. He brushes his lips over the top of her head and she shivers, burrowing against him, her breath hot through the gown. “Your back is going to be killing you in the morning,” he mumbles, reaching up to brush her side with a tentative hand. 

She shakes her head without looking up at him. “Not going home,” she says stubbornly, in a tone he's rarely heard from her: vulnerability.  _ Oh, Scully. _

“I don't want you to be uncomfortable,” he says, even though he doesn't want her to leave. He doesn't. He reaches for her arm and rubs a hand up and down it. 

Scully lifts her head a little, her eyes red and puffy like she has been crying. “Do you think you could move over a little?” she asks softly, brushing her fingers through his hair again. “Is there room?”

It takes effort, but he does move, sliding to the other side. The corners of Scully's mouth lifts, just a little, and she stands to climb in behind him. And that's when he sees it: the curve of her belly under her sweater. 

Anything he wanted to say catches in his throat, freezes there. She is  _ pregnant _ . He has no idea how long he's been gone, how the hell is she pregnant? He thought it was impossible. He always thought they'd try again someday, but he never thought this would happen. That he'd wake up with her this far along and no idea how.

Scully doesn't seem to notice, doesn't make any effort to explain. She crawls in beside him, curled up against him; there is no space for her to do otherwise. She presses her face into his neck, right below his chin where his pulse beats against her forehead, and breathes shudderingly into his skin.

“Scully?” he whispers, heart thudding. This can't be real, he isn't here. He's on the ship and they've found a new way to torture him: by showing him his partner as a mother, the thing they'd so badly wanted last December. It's impossible. It's  _ impossible. _

He feels a strange fluttering against his side, where the round of Scully's abdomen presses into his side. The baby is kicking. Scully makes a startled sound against his throat and holds him tight, arms wrapped hard around his ribcage. “Scully?” he whispers again, pressing his mouth into her hair.  _ Is this real?  _ he wants to ask.  _ How did this happen? Is it mine?  _

“I love you,” she murmurs, voice cracking. She's never said it before.

A tear trickles down the side of Mulder's face. His throat is sore; he feels numb, foggy. He has dim memories of a coffin, tight with no space to move. He thinks he can remember Scully crying. It's too much, he lets his eyes slip closed, his head falls back against the pillow. Scully is asleep, curled against him; he can hear the ease of her breathing. He presses his cheek to the top of her head. The baby kicks again and he shivers. He doesn't remember falling asleep. 

\---

He's back on the ship, pinned in place as they slice into him. He cries out with pain, shrinks away from the blades, pushes at the blankets they've wrapped him in. He's hurt, he's buried, he can't breathe. He calls out for Scully out of pure habit, a useless attempt at comfort on the ship after she'd come so close to finding him. He had heard her calling for him in the desert, and he'd called back, but she hadn't heard. He thought she was here, but he's alone, he can't feel her beside him, he knew it wasn't real. He knew that seeing her again was too good to be true.

And suddenly she's beside him again, her face white with concern as nurses crowd behind her. “Mulder,” she whispers, stroking his forehead. “It's okay, Mulder, you're safe. I'm here.”

Someone injects something into his IV, and he clenches his teeth hard. “Scully?” he rasps, trying to get control of his breathing. He can feel his heart pounding. “Where am I?”

“You're in the hospital.” She takes his hand and grips it in both of hers. “You're safe, it's okay.”

He swallows dryly as the drug enters his system. “That-that was real last night?”

Scully nods. Her eyes are red and puffy. He looks down a little and sees her baby bump. He swallows again. That was real, too. 

“Take it easy, Mr. Mulder,” says the nurse, who seems to be checking his vitals. “You're safe. We're going to examine you later, but right now, you should just try to relax. Get some more sleep.”

He doesn't want to go back to sleep—sleep is too dangerous, sleep has no ability to ground him, remind him that he is safe and back on Earth—but his eyes are already lolling, tired from the sedative they must've given him. Scully kisses his knuckles, sitting beside him in the chair. 

“The chair… it's too hard for you,” Mulder mumbles. If she's pregnant _ (pregnant _ , Jesus, he'd never thought…), than she shouldn't be sitting in hard plastic chairs beside his hospital bed. She should be at home. He doesn't think that there's a father of the baby, someone for her to go home to—he has no way of knowing for sure, of course, but he doesn't think Scully would jump into bed with someone else right away—but whether it's just her or not, she should go home. The baby needs rest. “You should go home,” he says sleepily. “Your baby needs rest.”

Scully's mouth opens a little, maybe in shock, maybe like she intends to say something. Her hand brushes over her stomach. “I'm not going anywhere,” she says firmly. 

“What about… what about your baby?” His eyes are only half open. 

“The baby will be okay.” Her voice is soft, affectionate in a way he's only ever heard her use with Emily or scared children on cases.  _ A mother's voice, _ he thinks, and flinches. 

He wants to ask her how this happened, if she decided to try the IVF again, if there's a father. How long he's been gone. But sleep is overtaking him. He closes his eyes and tries not to dwell on it. He's too tired.

“Mulder,” Scully says in that same.soft voice, like she wants to tell him something. But he's falling asleep, he's already gone and he can't remember anything after that. 

\---

Mulder sleeps on and off as he slowly regains strength. Scully sits beside the bed. Daylight comes and Skinner is dropping in to visit, Doggett is poking his head in. The baby shifts inside his watery world, and she rubs her hand over the spot where he's kicking.  _ I'm here,  _ she thinks. She wants to tell the baby that his dad is here, too, but Mulder’s detachment makes her hesitate. 

She doesn't know what to say to Mulder about the baby. That first night he woke up, he seemed shocked. She hadn't mentioned it, hadn't even thought of it, but she thinks he might've known based on the surprise on his face when he stood up. And last night, he'd told her to go home for the baby. Or  _ her _ baby, he'd said. Did he say that because he was concerned about the baby, or because he didn't want her there?  _ Her _ baby, he'd said. Hers. Not theirs. Hers.

She'd wanted to tell Mulder about the baby. She'd daydreamed about it when she first found out, before she knew he was gone, thought about Mulder coming back from Oregon and her greeting him with this wonderful news, miraculous news, until the Gunmen came to her room with sorrowful looks on their faces… Later, she'd thought she could tell him after she found him. Some degree of good news to surprise him with when he came back safely. Their miracle. She hadn't known how he would react half the time—and besides that, it got harder and harder to think about the longer he was gone and became impossible to imagine after she buried him—but she always imagined that  _ she  _ would be the one who got to tell him. Never imagined a scenario in which she was so visibly pregnant that Mulder knew just by looking at her. 

He'd wanted to be a father when she asked him to do the IVF with her; she'd been nervous about his level of involvement, but he'd wholeheartedly thrown himself into the process, comforted her after it didn't take, offered to try again or adopt with her. He'd wanted to be a parent with her. She wants to know what's changed. She keeps hearing his voice saying  _ Your baby,  _ and she wants to know if he ever really wanted this. If he just said yes because he thought it would make her happy, or if he wanted it once but doesn't anymore. If he's as willing as he was back then.

It doesn't matter, she tells herself. All that matters is that he is  _ here _ . Mulder is breathing raspily beside her and it is miraculous. She sniffles, reaches up and touches the side of his face. It feels different, his skin smooth and not decomposed (she bites her lips to hold back a shudder). He still has scars along his cheek, but he's starting to look more alive. Scully thumbs a tear from her eyes, shifts in the chair and watches him sleep with one hand in his and the other on her stomach. 

When Mulder wakes up, later, he seems subdued. Better, in good health, but subdued. He speaks in few words, looks vaguely off into the distance. She tries to goad him into conversation, but he doesn't seem very interested. She doesn't even know what they'd talk about, anyway. The baby? His missing time? The X-Files? That's probably the safest topic and the one he'd be the most interested in, but she isn't ready to talk about Doggett yet. It still feels wrong, having another partner. Like she's betrayed him. They end up sitting in silence. But she keeps on holding his hand.  _ He's here, _ she tells herself again.  _ He's here, he's here.  _

They take him in for testing later and he is able to walk on his own. He really does seem to have a lot of his strength back. When the doctor mentions checking the state of Mulder’s brain, his face whitens a little as he looks over at Scully in fear. She clenches her jaw and doesn't break eye contact. She still hasn't completely forgiven him for keeping that from her. “You… you know?” he asks quietly, and she nods. He gulps, looking down at the ground. “I'm sorry.”

She swallows back any anger she has. She'd barely let herself think about this before, the fact that he was dying and never told her, because she was so focused on finding him. And now that she has him back, she doesn't want to ruin it with a fight. “It doesn't matter,” she says. “It's over now.” 

Mulder looks down a little at her stomach before looking her in the eye again. “I guess it is,” he says softly, and she's not sure if he just means the disease. And she isn't sure if it  _ is _ actually over. He could still be sick. He could still be dying. When Mulder leaves with the doctors, she goes to the chapel and spares a quick prayer for Mulder, for the baby, for herself. 

Skinner visits when Mulder comes back, relief visible on his face. From leaving Mulder in Oregon to pulling Mulder off life support, Scully can imagine that he must be feeling a tremendous amount of guilt. Mulder seems somewhat subdued. Skinner apologizes awkwardly and Mulder just as awkwardly accepts it, and Scully stares down at her hands on her knees, unsure of what to do. Skinner is not normally the sentimental type; she's gotten used to it, his caring demeanor, after six months of crying all over him, but she supposes Mulder hasn't. She's a little relieved when he leaves. 

“Was there any news?” she asks, almost as soon as the door has closed. “With your scans?”

Mulder works his jaw back and forth, looking straight ahead instead of at her. “Results tomorrow,” he says softly. Scully nods, thumbing the corner of her eye and praying she doesn't cry again.  

“Scully, I…” He's speaking uncertainly, and when she looks up, he's looking at her. The scars on his cheeks are glaring, an expression not unlike fear on his face. “I found out after you… you went on the road trip with the smoker,” he says quietly. “I… I didn't know how to tell you. I know it's no excuse, but I didn't… I didn't want to try and make you forgive me by dumping that kind of news on you, and then… I kept chickening out. I didn't want to upset you.”

Scully swallows back the anger in her chest, her fear. She wants to scream at him, tell him how hard it was to lose him. That he has no idea. That he owes her the truth, at least, and he was the first person she told when she was dying, how dare he, how fucking dare he. “It doesn't matter,” she says too firmly, and now she's the one to look away. “All that matters now is that you're back.” 

She can feel him watching her carefully, maybe a little sadly. Tears well up in her eyes unexpectedly; she curses these pregnancy hormones and struggles to her feet, muttering, “I'll be right back,” and making a beeline for the bathroom. She doesn't want to cry in front of him again. There's no Kleenex in the cramped room, so she muffles her sobs with the scratchy toilet paper. He could still be dying. She could lose him all over again.

\---

Scully doesn't go home; when she exits the bathroom with red eyes, his chest stings as if someone has sucker-punched him there, and he tries to tell her to go to a hotel and get some rest because it's too hard seeing her like this. And that's when she tells him that she doesn't even have a hotel, and she doesn't want to drive an hour back home when she's this tired. She doesn't leave, but she also doesn't get back into the bed with him. She asks the nurse to bring her a cot. Mulder can't be too surprised, considering the fact that she knows about the brain disease and is pregnant with a baby that is likely not his, but it stings just as much as seeing her this sad.

No matter what, though, it helps to hear her breathing beside him in the dark. Being alone only increases it, the fear building inside of him. If he closes his eyes, he sees the ship. He sees the coffin he can barely remember and he can't breathe. He lies flat on his back, eyes open, and listens to Scully breathe. 

\---

In the morning, Mulder feels well enough to get out of bed and go to the bathroom on his own, without any help getting up or walking. When he exits the room, he finds Scully sitting up on the cot, her hand protectively over her stomach. “You must be feeling better,” she says, the corner of her mouth turning up just a bit. Just a little. She sounds extraordinarily relieved. 

Instead of the bed that he's entirely too tired of, he opts for the hard plastic chair. “I'd say so,” he offers. “Considering everything.”

Scully climbs off of the cot, smoothing her rumpled hair. “I'm going to go find your doctor,” she says briskly. “Maybe I could get you home by lunchtime.”

Mulder looks at the overly clean tiles below his feet. “That'd be nice,” he mumbles. “But, uh. You might have some trouble getting me out of here in this.” He plucks at the thin hospital gown he's been wearing. 

Scully unsnaps the top of her bag. “Actually, I brought some of your clothes with me,” she says, and he looks up in surprise. She pulls out a stack of his folded clothes. “I… I was trying to be optimistic,” she adds softly when she sees him looking. 

“I still… I still have clothes?” he asks cautiously. He supposes that he expected Scully to keep  _ some  _ things, but an entire outfit? He's been buried for three months. Had she made a K-Mart run on her way to Annapolis?

“I kept your apartment,” says Scully. “I don't know why, I just… But everything of yours is still in it. It's still waiting for you.”

He chews at his lower lip, staring at her with some surprise. He can't believe she'd do this, keep his apartment through three months of him being buried. Scully, who is meticulous and not at all frivolous. Scully, who couldn't possibly have believed that he would come back, kept his apartment for three months while he was dead. His stomach twists with the weight of her confession. He thinks it'd be nice to go home, but he also doesn't want to go anywhere without her. 

Scully leaves to find the doctor and Mulder stays in the chair, makes no move towards the stack of clothes in the corner. Maybe he should've tried to go with her; he hates to be alone. His memories rush in like running water, invading the corners of his skull with a piercing sharpness. The ship, the pain. He touches his cheek gingerly, the place where they pinned him, the scars on his chest, but that only grounds him further in the flashbacks. He stares numbly at the wall until he hears Scully behind him, saying, “Mulder, you okay?”

He turns to look at her and finds her standing in the doorway with the doctor. “Yeah,” he says, getting to his feet and turning to face them. “For a guy who was, uh… in a coffin not too long ago I think I'm doing pretty damn good.” He begins to cross the room, away from Scully and the doctor, because they both are staring at him in a worried, expectant kind of way and it makes him squirm. He adds, “I don't quite have my legs under me… yet.”

Scully says from behind him, “Well, you might want to consider sitting down when you hear what we have to tell you.”

This would be the result of his scans. “Uh-oh.” He spares a quick hope that he isn't still dying, that they won't have to go through all this bullshit again, as he turns and sits down.

“No, it's, uh… it's good news. It's…  it's miraculous news,” Scully offers, smiling just a little bit as she looks back at the doctor for his part of this song-and-dance. 

The doctor begins speaking, but Mulder is barely listening. The same shit he's heard before, about how incredible this all is, how they can't believe it.  _ Spare me, _ he thinks bitterly. He's watching Scully, and he finds that she's watching him, too. 

She speaks next, confirming what he had hoped. “Whatever neurological disorder you were suffering from, it's no longer detectable. After a course of transfusions and antivirals it has rid your body of the virus that was invading it. The scars on your face on your hands, on your feet, on your chest, they-they seem to be repairing themselves.” He touches his scars a little as she speaks, not sure whether to be relieved or frightened that they are disappearing. If they're gone, is it supposed to be like it never happened? He's faced the impossible before, but he'd never wanted to  _ be _ the impossible. 

“Mulder, you are in perfect health,” Scully finishes. Her relief is hidden underneath her professional tone, but he can hear it. He knows it. He heard her crying in the bathroom last night. 

“Wow,” he says dumbly, unsure of what else to say. He's relieved, of course, but it's hard to process among everything else. He's not dying, but he knows what it's like to be dead. To be buried. He’ll live, but at what cost? How much do they really know about what's happened to him and why? What is his future with Scully, now that she's a mother?

She's smiling a little at him, like she can't believe it and is overwhelmingly happy because of it. It hurts a little; he can still hear her muffled sobs from the night before.

“How do you feel, Agent Mulder?” asks the doctor. 

“Like Austin Powers,” he cracks dryly.

Scully laughs quietly, briefly, but her heart isn't any more into it than his is. They're on dangerous ground, treading lightly, trying not to hurt each other, and he knows he's doing a shit job of it. And besides all of that, he can't find one single thing funny about any of this. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is about twice as long as yesterday’s, mostly because when i went to split this up into parts, i didn’t find many natural splits that would lend themselves to making them even. part two is the longest, part three (which will most likely be up tomorrow) will be slightly shorter than this one. i’ll add another note about references from auld acquaintance and sections borrowed from other fics i’ve written.

Scully drives Mulder home, the full hour between Annapolis and Alexandria. She wants him to be back home, in  _ his  _ apartment, to experience that familiarity of his own home. (She'd always felt that way after her near-death ordeals, craved her home like a stiff drink—barring what had happened with Pfaster.) So she's taking him home out of some attempt at comfort, even if she has no intention of leaving him alone. Not after what they've both been through. (That is, if he wants her there. If if he doesn't push her away.)

They're both quiet on the drive home. Maybe because they don't know what to say. Mulder plays with the door lock, the knob on her radio, flipping through songs at a dizzying rate and blinking rapidly when an unfamiliar song or news report comes on. Scully doesn't push.

She carries the bag she'd packed for him up to his apartment when they get there—he tries half-heartedly to argue with her and she insists repeatedly that she can handle it—and unlocks the door with her key, the one that says  _ M  _ across a strip of peeling tape she stuck to the front. (The label is from back when she didn't use the key all the goddamn time and occasionally forgot what it looked like. A laughable concept, now.) She goes in first and looks behind her to make sure he's still there—like tempting fate, all these times she's walked in alone. Like Orpheus and Eurydice. Don't look back or he'll disappear forever; a new kind of trust. Except he is still there. Thank God, he is still there. 

“Must feel good to be home,” she offers, and he nods a little, still quiet. She doesn't know what else to say so she continues further into the apartment, setting his bag down in his bedroom. The covers are still rumpled from when she slept there last: a night less than a week ago, the night she told herself was going to be the last time, tangled up in his comforter in one of his t-shirts with her hand over the baby, whispering comforting things to the both of them. She was trying to get up the courage to finally sell the place, to finally let go and move on with her life. And then the phone rang.

“Something looks different,” Mulder says from the living room, jolting Scully where she stands. The sound of his voice is still jarring, surprising.

She exits the bedroom and answers him in a dry voice: “It's clean.”

He chuckles softly, across the living room near the fish tank. “Ah, that's it,” he says, turning away from her to survey his desk. She fidgets anxiously with her key, honestly unsure of what to do next. What comes after this? What does she say? What  _ can  _ she say, to make what he's gone through any easier to deal with?

Mulder leans in close to the fish tank, and she swallows dryly at the thought of the dead fish. Another thing she's fucked up. “Missing a molly,” he says, as if reading her mind. 

“Yeah,” she says self-consciously, and adds before she can help herself, “She wasn't as lucky as you.”

He doesn't say anything to that, sitting gingerly on the edge of his desk. She doesn't know what she expected him to say.

She doesn't know what to say herself, but she wants him to know. She wants him to understand what it's been like for her, why she's reacting this way. Why things are so different. “Mulder…” she starts carefully, and waits until he looks at her before she continues, tremulously. “I don't know if you'll ever understand what it was like. First learning of your abduction… and then searching for you and finding you dead.” He's looked away now; he nods, a bit dismissively. This is hard for him, too. “And now to have you back, and…” She feels like she is going to cry again, but she still smiles. It still seems so unreal that she has him back, she still can't believe it. 

“Well, you act like you're surprised,” he says in some false jovial tone. Teasing again.

“I prayed a lot,” she admits, voice choked with emotion. “And my prayers have been answered.”

“In more ways than one,” he notes, nodding towards her belly. 

“Yeah,” she mumbles in some sort of numb surprise, looking down. It's the first time he's mentioned the baby since the night he told her to go home. 

“I'm happy for you,” he says in a way that suggests detachment. A cold rush goes through Scully. “I think I know… how much that means to you.”

He knows because he is the one who comforted her after the IVF failed, who offered to  _ adopt  _ with her, who said yes in the first place. He sat with her after the procedure failed and comforted her; he cried himself and tried to hide it. And now… She looks up at him with a degree of astonishment; he looks away. He doesn't understand.  _ It's yours,  _ she tries to say, but it's soundless, the words won't come, and he doesn't see her anyway. “Mulder…” she says instead, and she really is going to cry. 

“I'm sorry,” he says too quickly, shaking his head and looking back up at her. “I just... I have no idea where I fit in… right now. I just, uh... I'm having a little trouble… processing… everything.” He looks away from her, out the window. 

She watches him for a moment, willing herself not to cry again. “That's… that's certainly understandable,” she says softly. “You've been through a lot, and I don't want to… pressure you, or put expectations on you. I just… I just want to know that you're okay, Mulder.”

“And I'm not sure that I am,” he says, too harshly.

His hands are bearing hard into his knees with fear, his head bowed a bit. He is scared, traumatized, scarred. Tears rush to the surface, rolling down her cheeks, and she scrubs at her face with a furious sort of motion. She cannot fall apart here. She won't let herself. That is the last thing he needs right now. “If you need time, Mulder…” she starts shakily, “I want to give it to you. Whatever you need.”

Mulder’s jaw clenches, unclenches. “How long is it since you've been home, Scully?” he asks softly. 

She flinches, just slightly. “A few days,” she says softly. “Maybe longer.” She hadn't even been at home when they called her; she'd stopped by her apartment on the way to quickly put some clothes of hers into the bag she packed for Mulder. 

He looks back up at her, with a similarly emotion-filled look on his face. “Maybe you should go back,” he says. “Get some rest. For the baby.”

Her hand ghosts the front of her abdomen gently, and the baby kicks furiously.  _ This is your dad,  _ she thinks towards the baby without helping it.  _ Mulder, you're the father. Do you not know that? How could you not know?  _ She remembers his hand on her knee, his eyes wide and full of sincerity and emotion, the night after the pregnancy test had come back negative.  _ We could try again, if you wanted to, _ he'd told her.  _ I'm here whenever you're ready _ . She's never forgotten it. She wishes she'd known then that in a year they'd have that; she'd have done so many things differently, she never would have let him leave. 

“You're probably right,” she whispers, even though she doesn't want to leave. She  _ shouldn't  _ leave him. What kind of person—what kind of _ partner _ —would she be if she left him alone like this?

Mulder nods a little. She fidgets with her key a little before straightening, preparing to leave. She doesn't want to leave but she doesn't know how she can stay. “Call me if you need anything,” she says firmly. “Anything.” And then she's turning away, she's leaving, the metal of the key stamping her sweaty palm. 

Mulder doesn't follow. 

\---

He has a hard day without her. That's one way to describe it. 

He tries to fall into normality. He goes into the bedroom and finds his bed messy, looking as if it was recently slept in. Much more recently than the night he and Scully spent here before he went to Oregon.  _ Scully, _ he thinks, and the sentiment catches in his throat. He shouldn't have pushed her away, but he doesn't know how to be around her. Doesn't know what to say. He knows his awkwardness, his insensitivity is only hurting her and he never wants that. There's a shirt of his half buried under the pillow, and he swallows anxiously at the sight. Backs out of the room and retreats to the couch. 

He tries to watch TV, but his mind keeps wandering. Falling back into the abyss that is his abduction, his death. He tries to anchor his mind to whatever is on the TV. There's a story on the news about some guy who jumped the White House fence and was shot. They keep flashing his picture across the screen. Pronounced dead at the scene. Mulder shuts his eyes wearily and changes the channel. 

Time passes; he has no idea how long. He's curled halfway in the corner of the couch, cheek pressed against the leather like a child, rigid and tense. He wonders idly if he should try to sleep. He wishes he hadn't sent Scully away. 

There's a knock at the door and he jumps, curling into a more protecting ball, knees pressed to his scarred chest. It's an instinctual reaction, images flashing behind his eyes. They're coming, they're holding him down, they're hurting him. He isn't able to shake the stupor as the knocks continue, until he hears Scully's voice saying in a nervous sort of manner, “Mulder? Mulder, it's me.”

He lets himself lie back limply against the cushions, sweat lining his forehead, his breathing still slightly rapid. “I'm here,” he calls out tightly. 

The key clunks in the lock and he tenses again. Light falls across the floor as Scully's footsteps creak on the floorboards. Mulder swallows a few times, pushes himself off of the leather cushions and sits up. His hands are quivering, just slightly; he buries them in his jacket pocket and tries to look like he's okay.  _ In through the nose, out through the mouth,  _ he instructs himself, the way Scully has in the past.

And before he knows it, Scully is standing in front of him, and her presence is still a surprise, the baby is still a surprise. Something like relief flickers over her face when she sees him, a brief smile before it vanishes, replaced by concern. “Mulder, are you okay?” she whispers. “How are you feeling?” 

“Fine, I'm fine,” he says with a degree of impatience, rubbing his hand over his face, his mouth. He's so fucking tired of that question, even if he knows Scully is genuinely concerned. “What's up, Scully? Are you okay?”

“I'm okay,” says Scully. It's hard to read her tone, but she sounds slightly better than she did this morning. Not as weepy. “I was just thinking… you probably don't have a lot of food at your place. So I picked up some takeout.” She holds up her hand to reveal the plastic bags of Styrofoam containers in it. 

“Oh.” He swallows in an anxious sort of way and stands carefully. “Thanks, Scully.”

“It's no problem… Mulder, are you sure you're okay?” She reaches out gently and touches his wrist. He tenses, initially, but her fingers are cool against his wrist, far more comforting than he'd expected. He feels as if he is going soft at the edges, limp and pliable. 

He nods, his jaw tightening a little. “Just… processing,” he says softly. “A lot to process.”

Scully's thumb brushes the inside of his wrist again, her hand slipping down to curl around his. She squeezes his fingers. “I'm going to go grab some plates from the kitchen,” she says quietly. 

He squeezes back; he can't help it. He hadn't realized how comforting her presence was until she left and came back. She offers him a little smile before turning and going into the kitchen.

They eat side by side on the couch, the TV playing louder than it was before. Mulder eats too hungrily, his fork scraping the plate in a screechy manner. He's hungrier than he realized, he feels like he hasn't eaten in months and hospital food tastes like rubber, anyways. Chinese food has never tasted so good. 

Once they've both eaten, Scully makes no move to leave. She says nothing about it, just settles herself into the couch cushions and makes herself comfortable. Mulder doesn't comment on it, either; he thinks that being alone only increases whatever tension and fear is building inside of him. He just settles in beside her, props his feet up on the table and leans back. Their hands are just next to each other on the cushion, not touching, but it feels like enough. Scully smiles a little to herself and Mulder pretends he doesn't notice.

The characters on the TV argue and the audience laughs. Scully falls asleep, her head lolling against his shoulder. Mulder watches the TV, tries not to think. Tries not to recall the last six months or to pull Scully tight against him. He missed her like air, and now she's here and she's untouchable. She's built a new life without him, a life with her baby and her job. Even if she did sleep here, in his bed with his shirt, things have undeniably changed since then. And the pettiest part of him can't let that go. He doesn't think they can be the way they were before he left.

A few episodes later and Scully is still asleep. A small part of Mulder's mind protests that he should encourage her to go home, or at least move her to the bed, but the rest of him resists. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend it's seven months ago. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend all of it never happened. 

Scully's fist curls hard around his shirt, tugging him closer. Her face slips against his chest, her nose pressing in. He lets his defenses fall briefly and brushes his lips over the top of her head. He lets himself fall to the parts of him that are protesting, the whole of him that missed Scully and miss Scully still. He leans into her. He doesn't remember falling asleep. 

\---

Scully wakes up too warm, an arm draped around her. She forgets where she is for a second in a panic, hand flying to her stomach protectively, and then she remembers. Mulder is snoring slightly above her, his nose against the top of her head; her hand is tangled in his t-shirt. He's here.

Mulder stirs against her, his arm tightening briefly around her before letting go too quickly. He sits up and away from her like he's been burned, the way she used to long before their relationship had begun, when she used to fall asleep in his hotel room or vice versa and they'd gotten too close in their sleep. She wonders if it stung then, to him, as much as stings her now. 

“Hey, Scully,” Mulder mumbles in a quiet, embarrassed voice, rubbing at his eyes sleepily. 

She clears her throat. “Hi.”  

The baby rolls inside of her, and unexpected tears rise to her eyes. They have a baby, and Mulder doesn't know. Mulder still doesn't know, and she doesn't know how to tell him. Or maybe he does know and he's in denial. She doesn't know which she'd prefer. 

She clears her throat again, awkwardly. “I, uh,” she starts, hands against her knees. “I put in an application for you to come back to work yesterday evening. They said they'd give it to Kersh in the morning.” 

Mulder laughs bitingly. “I don't know how great my chances are with that avenue, Scully. Why not ask Skinner?”

“Because Kersh is Deputy Director now,” Scully replies with a hint of humor in her voice. Just their fucking luck; Kersh had been a real pain in the ass during the search for Mulder and a part of her still resents him for assigning Doggett to the X-Files, even after all the times he'd saved her life, all the things she has to thank him for. “Anyways. Like you said, I'm not sure how good of a chance we have with Kersh, but whatever he decides… you don't necessarily have to go back if you're not ready. I just thought you… might want to.” She's torn between trying to talk him out of it (because God knows he'll probably ignore whatever Kersh says) and letting him come back. She's missed working with Mulder more than she’d ever expected, felt the hole of his loss every time she looked to the side for him and found Doggett instead. She doesn't know what will happen to Doggett or the Files now that Mulder is back, but she hopes that the Files will be theirs again, that they can fall back into their normal routine (as normal as possible, at least) and Doggett can move on to bigger, better things. She wants the best for him, her temporary partner. (And she selfishly wants her real partner back.)

Mulder rubs the side of his jaw, not quite looking at her. “We’ll see what Kersh says.”

Scully wants to laugh at the irony of Mulder listening to Kersh, but she understands why. He's clearly not ready, which is more than understandable; he's been through an unimaginable ordeal. “We'll see,” she says gently, reaching out to touch his knee comfortingly. He scoots away from her and she flinches a little, draws her hand back. “Do you want anything for breakfast?” she offers carefully, trying to keep her voice steady. 

“I don't have any food, remember?” Mulder says in a hushed, irritable tone. “Haven't been living here in the past six months.”

“I could go get something.” She stands, with effort, briskly smoothing her rumpled sweater. 

“You don't need to do that.”

She ignores that, turning towards his bedroom. “I'm going to go change. I still have some clothes over here.” She turns her head slightly and sees him watching her, a soft look in his eyes. But it's gone just as quickly as it came. She swallows and goes into the bedroom. 

The bed is exactly how she left it. No signs that he's done anything in here. She doesn't know what she expected, but the sight still leaves her breathless. If she stays in here, it's like he's still gone. 

She's in the middle of changing when there's a knock at the door. “Hey, Scully,” Mulder calls from the living room, his voice still full of that emotion that's somewhere between bitter humor and resentment. “Our boss dropped by to say good morning.”

\---

Skinner is actually awkwarder than Scully is. After letting him in, Mulder retreats to the couch to effectively shut down the idea of cheery conversation; he's not in the mood for any of it. But Skinner doesn't seem like he wants to reminisce or apologize or even welcome him back to the land of the living. He has news, he says, about the application Scully filed, and Kersh's new plans for Mulder. 

Halfway through his spiel, Scully comes out and stands beside Skinner, like a posse of doctors giving bad news. Like partners. Mulder wonders if that is what they have become in his absence, as they looked for him: partners. He's never really been jealous of Skinner before, but he sure as hell is now. Skinner got to stay back on Earth, walk away from Oregon with everything intact. Skinner got to work with Scully. Skinner got to be there when Mulder wasn't, Skinner probably knows who the father is. 

When Skinner gets to the defining piece of news, Mulder smirks. He can't help it. “Kersh wants to put me behind a desk? That is  _ not _ what Kersh wants.”

“No, I think Kersh wants you to quit, Mulder,” says Scully, coming over to sit beside him. Petty as it is, ridiculous as it is, Mulder feels a small pang of satisfaction towards Skinner.  _ She's  _ my _ partner, _ he thinks bitterly, petulantly. 

Skinner is already speaking. “It's more than that. He wants to punish you, to hurt you.”

“And you, by putting you in this position. And Agent Scully, for not giving up on me,” says Mulder, looking over at Scully where she is sitting beside him. Whatever happened, however her life has changed since he disappeared, he knows she never gave up on him. That much is more than clear. “Truth is, this is a bullet that was fired about eight years ago. It's a magic bullet that's been going round and round and right now it seems poised to hit me right in the back of the head,” he finishes with a degree of false amusement. He wants to hit someone. 

“Well, I think the question is, Mulder, are we going to sit here and let this happen?” Scully asks. 

“Scully, you're going to give birth in a couple months,” he says, with that same degree of false amusement, and he doesn't miss her slight flinch. Maybe her baby is a topic that should just stay off limits with them. “You can talk as tough as you like but you know and I know and they know that, in a little while, you're going to have more important things than whether or not the X-Files remains open.”

“They're not closing the X-Files. Kersh aims to keep them open with Agent Doggett running them,” says Skinner. 

“Agent who?” Mulder asks, confused. Who the hell would volunteer for a unit like the X-Files? And why? He'd thought that the only people who actually cared about the X-Files were him and Scully. And why is this other agent any different than him? Why is this agent more equipped than the founder of the unit himself?

For a second, no one answers. He looks between Skinner and Scully until Scully speaks up—sheepishly, as if admitting to a crime. Or an affair. “I've had a partner for the last several months. He was assigned to help me find you.” Her voice falters only slightly, when she says  _ to help me find you _ . 

The realization burns in Mulder's throat: someone did try to take his place, but it sure as hell wasn't Skinner. He nods a little in a knowing sort of way. “Mission accomplished. Does he know what he's doing at all, this guy?”

“About the paranormal? Not much,” Skinner says. 

“I see. Then maybe the question is not who fired this magic bullet, but whether or not it was a lone gunman.” He's smiling and he doesn't know why. He hates this, tremendously so.

“Agent Doggett is above reproach, Mulder,” Scully says gently, and her defense of him stings more than Mulder would have ever expected. She's defending this guy? A lot really has changed since he's been gone. “He's being manoeuvred just like you.”

“Well, good. At least he's manoeuvrable,” Mulder says quietly, and gets up. Half an hour ago, the idea of going back to work sounded ridiculous, but now, he's entirely too determined to get back to his office.  _ His  _ office. Things may be different now, but the Files are his and he's taking them back. 

“Where are you going?” Skinner asks.

“I'm going to get dressed. For the first time I feel like getting back to work.” He shuts the bedroom door behind him. 

He can hear Skinner and Scully's hushed voices through the door. He ignores them, stubbornly, finds a suit in his closet. It has something of a musty feel to it, proof it hasn't been worn in six months. He ignores it, buttons the shirt too quickly, nearly ripping the holes with his force. 

There's a knock at the door. “Want to carpool to work, Scully?” Mulder calls out in a cheerful sound that can't possibly be coming to his mouth. What the hell is wrong with him? “Since I don't actually _ have _ a car anymore? What do you think?”

The door opens and Scully enters, her hand against the swell of her abdomen. There's a slight movement under her sweater—a foot, maybe—and he looks away. “Or I guess you're not going in,” he says, motioning to her in a way that leaves him vaguely disgusted with himself. “You think Skinner would let me ride with him?”

“Mulder, I've been working for the past six months,” Scully says, her voice edging on cold. “In the  _ field. _ I am perfectly capable.”

He looks up in surprise, genuine surprise. When he woke up and saw her like that, he assumed… Even when she told him about Doggett, he assumed it was a temporary thing that took place mostly in the office. With an inexperienced agent on the Files and Scully pregnant, he'd thought it was equivalent to desk duty. “In the field?” he asks. “Scully, the job is  _ dangerous _ .”

She clenches her jaw. “I am well aware. But I've been careful. Or at least I've tried to be.”

“You've tried to be?” He feels the familiar surge of protectiveness surging over him. What does that mean? What happened to her? “Scully…”

“Mulder, I'm fine. It's over now.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Just because I'm pregnant doesn't mean I put my life on hold. If the IVF had worked, last year, would you have wanted me to stay out of the field?”

His mouth gapes a little, unsure of what to say. It's hard to think of the IVF now, the whirlwind of weeks when he thought that they would be parents together. And now he is not involved at all. Of course, he'd always told himself that he would be there for her and whatever child she had, whether he was the father or not—he’d promised himself that with Emily, and that promise carried over to whatever other children she would have—but this,  _ this _ . Seeing her pregnant and knowing that it happened while he was gone… he doesn't know how to deal with that. Of course, he can't blame Scully for moving on with her life, but the fact that she did it while he was gone, while he was in danger… He doesn't want to be cruel, but he doesn't know how he can be involved in that. 

“I… I don't know,” he says finally, dumbly. “I never quite expected you to be pregnant and working the field with someone else.”

Scully's jaw works back and forth. She looks like she's either about to cry or scream at him. He certainly deserves the latter more than the former. “That was not my fault,” she says coldly. “Working with Doggett, at least. I fought it as much as I could. But I'm grateful that I couldn't fight it, if only because of what he has done for me.” Mulder rubs at his jaw angrily and tries not to scowl. She is still talking, reassuring him of this man's character. “He's a good man. He helped me look for you, tirelessly, and he had my back. He saved my life.”

Mulder blinks again, rapidly. So that is what  _ when it was possible _ means. “Saved your life?” he repeats, dumbfounded.  _ What the hell happened to her? _

Her face softens, just a little, briefly, at that. “Yes,” she says. “But you don't need to worry about that. I'm fine.”

He should've been here. He never should've left. He should've been here to protect her, to be her partner. He never should've left. He was such a fucking idiot, leaving her the way he did. He rubs his jaw again, his mouth. He doesn't know what to say. He turns away, buttoning the last few buttons on his shirt. “I guess you are,” he says quietly. 

Scully waits a beat before continuing, changing the subject. “Mulder, you can't go in to work. If you want any chance to get back on the X-Files, you have to tread carefully. You know how Kersh is.”

“Oh, believe me, I know.” He grabs a tie from the closet and drapes it over his shoulders. “But I'm thinking if I don't go back and stake my claim, I never will.”

Scully says nothing as he knots the tie around his neck. And then she speaks, quietly and out of breath like she's been kicked in the chest: “I tried, Mulder.” 

He turns and she is standing there watching him. Her eyes are red, like she is going to cry again. She shrugs a little, her chin quivering, offers him a humorless smile. “I tried, but I don't know if it helped at all. You know they've had it out for us since day one.”

He wants to smile back, but he doesn't. They still might lose the Files, and it feels like he's already lost his partner. “Well, maybe they finally found a way to shut us down,” he says. “But I'm not going down without a fight. And I'm not walking away without figuring out what happened to me. I want to make sure it doesn't happen again.”

He brushes past her, thinking that if she won't drive him and Skinner won't drive him, he'll take a cab. Thinking that work will at least distract him from thinking about Scully, about his abduction, about everything that's changed. But Skinner is blocking the door, pacing through the front foyer as he talks on the phone. Mulder bounces up and down on the balls of his feet, suddenly anxious to get out of there.

He hears Scully coming up behind him. She starts urgently, “Mulder…” but stops when she sees Skinner. “What's going on?” she asks, and Mulder shrugs.

“We'll be there as soon as possible,” says Skinner into his phone, and hangs up with a beep. “Absalom escaped from prison,” he says to Scully.

“Oh my god,” Scully says in surprise. “Seriously?”

Skinner nods. “They're beginning a manhunt now, they want us to fill in the team.”

“Wait a second,” Mulder interjects, irritated. “Who the hell is Absalom?”

Guilt flickers simultaneously over Skinner and Scully's faces; Scully looks away, looking down at her feet. “He led a… UFO cult in Montana,” Skinner says awkwardly. “We apprehended him late last January.”

_ Late January.  _ Around the time he was found and buried. Scully is fidgeting with her hands, a nervous habit he can read like a book. He crosses his arms over his chest. “And what does he have to do with my abduction?” he says tensely. He can tell that it is related by the way they're reacting.

Skinner looks away, as if on instinct. Scully clears her throat and looks back up at him. “We found you… on the property of Absalom’s cult.” Her voice breaks, only a little, and Mulder thinks bitingly,  _ You mean my body. You found me fucking dead.  _

Scully is still talking. “Jeremiah Smith was healing abductees as they returned,” she says unsteadily. “Using the cult to disguise himself. He intended to… heal you as well… but he was abducted before he could.” She looks back down, tucking hair behind her ear, wipes her eyes quickly. 

Mulder swallows, his throat sore. He could've been saved. He could've been saved before he ever was buried. Fuck. “Sounds… sounds like a lead on what happened to me,” he says. 

“Mulder, you can't investigate yet,” Skinner says immediately. “Kersh hasn't even said you can come back yet, much less reassigned you to the X-Files.”

“Skinner's right, Mulder,” Scully adds. “Push too hard and he'll make sure you never get back.”

Mulder laughs bitterly. “When has that ever stopped me before?”

“Whatever you're thinking, Mulder, I'll reiterate that I'd advise holding back,” Skinner says, and he finally sounds like Mulder's boss again. “Stay home. Get some rest. You more than deserve it. We have no plans to let any of these leads drop, you know.”

Mulder’s eyes shift to Scully, who nods. He frowns. “Good to know,” he says bitterly. “Glad you two have this handled.”

“Mulder, don't take this the wrong way.” Scully touches his elbow gently. “It's probably too soon for you to come in, anyway.”

_ That's not what you thought when you put in a request for me to work,  _ Mulder thinks bitterly, but he says nothing else. Nods and lets them leave. Scully kisses him on the cheek gently and briefly, her eyes sad. He looks nervously between her and Skinner, who is looking away awkwardly and doesn't bat an eye. Scully was the one who always insisted on the subtlety rules; he wonders what has changed since then. He supposes there can't really be a father in the picture if she's with him all the damn time and kissing his cheek. He offers her a small smile, even if he doesn't feel like smiling at all. And then they are both gone, leaving Mulder alone. 

He has no plans to stay at home, of course—he can't be trapped in that endless cacophonous silence, the possibility of flashing back again. But he doesn't want to go straight to the Bureau, not after the exchange they'd just had. He decides to pull Scully's hospital records from the past six months. He wants to know what  _ He saved my life  _ and  _ I tried to be careful  _ means. 

\---

He wants to throw up when he sees it. Hospitalized four times since his abduction, once after being thrown into a wall mere days after he disappeared, once for acute abdominal pains, once when she was sedated directly after escaping a hospital too soon after an amnio, and once after being abducted in the desert by a cult and reportedly having had a slug cut out of her back. Staring at the report, he feels nauseous, numb and unable to move. “Sir?” the woman who pulled the reports asks; she knows that he is Scully's emergency contact. “Are you all right? Were you not called when Miss Scully was hospitalized?”

He feels cold, coated in sweat. “I wasn't here,” he whispers. “I couldn't be here for her.” He  _ should've _ been there; he could've done something to protect her, could've stopped all this from ever happening. How much of this was she pregnant for, how did this affect her baby? The slug-related hospitalizations was apparently in Utah, which means it was on an X-File. What the fuck happened there? Another wave of nausea comes over him.

“Sir?” the woman asks, full of concern. 

He hands her the files and walks away with a faux-calm gait, retches over the sink in the bathroom. He can't stop seeing Scully in pain, pinned down the way he was on the ship, screaming for help the way he did. He knows it couldn't have been the same, but it could've been. Did she scream for him even though he couldn't have helped her? The way he'd screamed for her? He doesn't know. He doesn't want to. He wipes his mouth, his eyes wet. He doesn't know what to do. Too many bad things happen to him, and he doesn't know what to do. 

At least Scully has the baby. If nothing else goes right, then at least she has this, what she's wanted for so long. 

He goes straight to the X-Files office after that, and rummages through files from the past two months. He doesn't linger too long on any of the other cases, purely and simply because he has no desire to dig into this Agent Doggett character. (He does notice the second desk, with Agent Doggett's nameplate, and that brings a degree of regret, builds it in his throat. He should've gotten Scully a desk. There's so many things he should've done differently.) He finally finds the Utah case, and reading on it further does nothing to alleviate the sick feeling he has. What the fuck was she doing out there alone? He doesn't know whether or not to be angry at Doggett for not going with her, or at Scully for going alone. He can't be angry at her, though, not when he sees what she went through. The hospital report hangs heavy in his mind. There are crime scene photos, and that is equally horrible. He doesn't linger too long on the file because he finds himself unable to. He decides to move on to the file on his abduction, the file on Absalom. And that file is actually worse. 

Reading the words  _ Agent Mulder was found deceased at the scene,  _ written into Agent Doggett's report, an unfamiliar handwriting, makes him run for the bathroom to vomit again. There's no autopsy report because there was no autopsy, and for that, he should be grateful. But he was  _ dead.  _ Scully found him dead. Scully buried him. Maybe if she had examined him, she would've known… But he'll never know. He can't dig too far into it because he'll never know and it's not worth it. This is not about his death. This is about his abduction, and how Absalom connects to it. He digs further into the file, looking for things that do not mention him. 

Finally, he finds the information on Absalom's cult. A brief write-up by Scully of Jeremiah Smith's involvement, choppy and emotionless, shoving back her grief. He swallows anxiously and shoves it aside to find a report by a Monica Reyes. Who the hell is that? Underneath that is a photograph of Absalom with a group of abductees. And in the top right hand corner is the man who jumped the White House fence, the one he kept seeing on the news the night before. Howard Salt. 

This is a lead that Scully could probably use. He pulls out his phone and texts her,  _ Where is everybody? Come on down. Mulder. _ And then he makes himself comfortable, puts his feet up on the goddamn desk that used to be his. 

Can't let anyone know what he's really feeling, after all.

\---

Doggett isn't answering his phone when Scully calls him, but that doesn't matter because Mulder is at the Bureau and Mulder is poking into things he shouldn't be poking into. But he does find the connection between Absalom and the man who was shot on the White House lawn. There is that. Actual, useful evidence.

Scully is trying to balance her concern for Agent Doggett and her concern for Mulder, but Skinner encourages Scully not to worry about it. He wants Doggett to lead the manhunt so he volunteers to find him. “You go on home, rest,” he tells her, clearly talking to the both of them. Mulder is somewhat glowering in the background—upset, she supposes, because she is worried about Doggett. She doesn't care at this point. She asks Skinner to call her when Doggett turns up and lets him return to the manhunt with Mulder's new evidence. She is, admittedly, exhausted. 

But Mulder doesn't want to go home yet. He wants to retrieve Howard Salt’s personal effects, continue the investigation further. He seems hyperfocused, like he is filling his mind with this case so he doesn't think about other things. The way she's done in the past. Or it's likely a combination of that and truly wanting to get to the bottom of all of this. (Mulder would want to, of all people.) She doesn't completely care either way. All she knows is that if they continue to push, Kersh will make sure that neither of them have access to the Files. And she doesn't think either of them want that. Worse than that, Mulder could be arrested for stealing evidence if he's caught, and she can't imagine what they'll do if he's sent to prison. 

She bickers with Mulder all the way to the evidence room, trying to convince him it's a bad idea. But at least that's one familiar thing about Mulder: he doesn't actually give a shit. She follows him into the evidence room and closes the door for him, because she is still his partner and she's always supported his harebrained schemes. Even if she doesn't approve. Even if she thinks it's a rabbit hole that might be a bad idea to go down, a senseless thing to risk this much on. 

Mulder wants to figure out what happened to him, and that doesn't surprise her at all. He wants to stop it so it doesn't happen again. He says, “Because if I can't stop it, it could happen to anyone. It could happen to you,” and the sentiment twists in her stomach. She helps him steal Howard Salt's laptop because it feels like the only thing to do. Because even if it does lead to nothing and even if they do get caught, they've never actually cared about getting caught before, and she owes him this, at least. After everything. She owes him her help.

Mulder took a taxi to the Bureau because he doesn't have a car yet, so they ride back together. “We can go back to my apartment,” Scully says, her hands too tight around the wheel. “It's closer.” When Mulder responds with a tight nod, she wonders if she should've asked him if he wanted to go home. She'd say something, but she doesn't know if she can leave him again, especially overnight. She's being selfish, but she can't help it. A week ago, he was dead. 

She drives them back to her apartment with her hands steady on the wheel. They don't talk a lot, but when she pulls into the parking space, Mulder says, “Thanks,” in a sheepish voice. She looks over at him in surprise as she turns the key in the ignition. He offers her a small, hangdog smile. “For helping me steal the laptop.”

She pulls the keys out with a click and smiles back. “What else are partners for?” He taps her knee with a tentative finger and smiles a little wider. For a second, it feels almost normal between them.

That seems to fade when they get up to her apartment. When she leads him through the threshold and his face flickers with disappointment. She wonders for a moment what changed, and then she sees what he's looking at: the disassembled crib in her hallway that was delivered a couple weeks ago. Something in the pit of her stomach thunks; she swallows dryly. The baby kicks as if he can sense what she's thinking. The crib was something she'd wanted to do with Mulder.

She’d been so hesitant at first, when he’d been abducted, to do anything for the baby. She went to her doctor’s appointments. She had a habit of talking to the baby—only when she was alone, things like  _ I’m your mother, I’m going to protect you, I love you so much _ . Things like,  _ It's going to be okay. _ And Mulder was usually a regular topic, too. But she didn’t want to do anything without him. She’d avoided speculating gender, considering names, going baby shopping. She felt like she couldn’t allow herself to take too much enjoyment in it all, not without him there. 

After he’d died, it’d been different. She knew she couldn’t let the baby come unprepared, so she’d forced herself. She’d suffered through shopping trips with her mother to Babies-R-Us and discussions about the future after he’d been buried for a couple months. She went to doctor's appointments and looked at apartment listings and weighed whether or not to leave the Bureau so the baby would be guaranteed at least one living parent. She bought a crib. But she still felt guilty, still missed Mulder at every step. Prayed and bargained to have him back. She still loved the baby with everything in her—but sometimes, she didn’t know how she would do it without him. She didn't know how she could do anything without him.

Now, she parades him through the skeletonized, half-finished nursery for reasons she can't quite explain. It's probably a bad idea, definitely an awkward few minutes, but she wants him to see it, wants him to know how much this means to her. It's only half finished because her mother had flat out refused to let her paint (”Paint fumes could be bad for the baby, Dana.”), and fought her on setting up any furniture, recruiting the Gunmen instead (which Scully had found amusing because she has no idea how her mother had figured out how to contact them). It’s unfinished mostly because she senses it was painful for the Gunmen to be around her; she reminded them too much of Mulder. (She still remembers the phone conversation she’d had with them in the hallway outside of Mulder’s room. She’s never heard Frohike happier.) 

“It needs work,” she says awkwardly, waving her hand at the half-painted yellow wall. (She's ready to repaint the whole thing herself; she hates how bright it is.) Mulder nods, looking over the mess of shopping bags in the corner. “There was, um, one thing I thought you’d appreciate,” she continues, holding up the solar system mobile, the one thing she’d picked out herself, without coaxing from her mother. (She’d imagine what he’d say if they had bought it together, imagined she could hear his voice commenting on how important it is for a child to have a broad knowledge of space and planets and stars. She’d almost cried in the middle of the Babies-R-Us aisle.) If this doesn't convince him that he is important in all of this, important to her, than she doesn't know what will.

Mulder tries to smile, but it comes out wobbily. Scully’s stomach twists. He’s trying to be happy for her, but she has no idea how he's taking all of this. What he's thinking. What he wants. 

“Looks like you've got it pretty well set up in here, Scully,” Mulder says awkwardly. “Everything a kid could want.”

She bites her lip so hard it bleeds, and she can feel the baby turning over. “That's the hope,” she says quietly.

Mulder nudges the solar system mobile with one finger. It turns slightly from where it dangles in her hand. She sets it down, sensing he is uncomfortable in here, and says, “I can order in some dinner, if you want. I don't have a lot of things to cook with, but I have some frozen meals…”

“Whatever you're in the mood for.” He follows her out of the room and she pretends not to notice his relief. 

Mulder flops down on her couch while she calls in a pizza. The baby, overactive from all the excitement, is kicking again; she rubs the spot in a comforting sort of way. She's going to fill Mulder in on all of it soon, she's going to make this right, but right now, she just wants to get through the night. She checks her voicemail briefly for voicemails from Doggett and finds none before she goes to sit beside Mulder on the couch. “They said it should be here in about forty minutes,” she says.

“That's good,” says Mulder. “I'm starved.”

“Me too.” She's hungry a lot of the time now, and the kid makes her crave a disgusting array of foods that could only be Mulder's genes at work. She's been coerced into eating so much pizza over the past two months. She finds it hilarious, when it wasn't making her incredibly sad.

“I found out…  what happened to you,” Mulder says suddenly, softly, anxiously, like he's been punched in the stomach. “While I was gone.” He seizes both of hers hands in his, in a rapid motion that surprises her.

Scully blinks in surprise. “You saw what…” she starts, trailing off as she remembers. This morning, she'd told him Doggett had saved her life. She shouldn't have expected him  _ not  _ to look into it. “You pulled my hospital records?” she says instead.

He nods gingerly, looking away at where he's holding her hands like he's her prom date or something. “I… didn't know,” he says softly. “I'm sorry.”

“It's okay, Mulder.” She's honestly as eager to forget her own ordeals—her horror and fear, her terror that they'd hurt the baby more than her and it would be her fault—as she's sure he is to forget his. She squeezes his hands comfortingly where they are tangled with hers on his knees. “Like I said, it's over now. I'm okay, the baby’s okay…” 

“But I should've been here,” Mulder mumbles. He's still not looking at her, his thumb stroking her palm. 

Scully sniffles a little, unable to help it. “It couldn't have been helped,” she says softly. “But it's okay. You don't have to worry about me.”

He lets go of one of her hands and reaches back, gingerly, to touch the back of her neck. His thumb is warm, pressed directly under the spot where her chip is, directly over top of the spot where Doggett cut into her neck. He read the file from Utah. She shudders a little, but she doesn't make any attempt to move away. Mulder strokes the scar gently. She reaches up and covers his wrist with one hand. He squeezes her other hand. For a minute, like in the car, it almost feels like everything will be okay. 

The phone rings, suddenly, startling them both. Mulder lets go of her hand. Scully sighs a little. “I guess I should get that,” she says, and he nods. 

It's her mother, calling to confirm whether or not it's true, the things she's heard about Mulder. “It's true,” Scully says softly, a little bit of laughter in her voice. “I swear to you, Mom, he's sitting right in my living room.”

Mulder either doesn't hear or ignores her. Out in the living room, he turns on the TV. 

Scully talks to her mom, reassuring her, trying to explain for a good twenty minutes. And by the time she hangs up, the pizza is being delivered. They eat it on her couch, more or less in silence outside of the TV. Mulder makes no attempt to reinitiate the closeness between them before the phone rang, so she makes no attempt, either. She doesn't know what to do. 

They watch TV for a while after the pizza is gone. Scully burrows into the couch after flipping off the lamp; she's exhausted, more so than she was an hour ago, and the kid has finally settled down, so she wants to take advantage of this chance. She's half asleep, nestled into the cushions, when she feels a feather-light touch on her hand. “Hey,” Mulder whispers. “Are you asleep?”

“Yes,” she mumbles.

He laughs a little in an anxious sort of way. “You should get a good night's sleep,” he says. “In a real bed this time.”

Scully laughs uneasily herself, opening her eyes to look at him. “I think my lower back would appreciate that.” 

“I'm sure.” Mulder covers her hand warmly and pats it before leaning back. “I'll be out here if you need me, okay?” 

She freezes a little in surprise—she didn't expect this. She figured they would stay together, like they did on the couch last night. But the last thing she wants to do is push him or make him uncomfortable. So she just says, “Okay,” and lugs herself off the couch. Mulder’s hand flies to her elbow, to steady her. She offers him a thin thank-you smile as she goes into the bedroom. 

\---

When she wakes up in the middle of the night (because she's constantly uncomfortable now, which makes it hard to sleep through the night), she finds Mulder there, lying on top of the blankets. He's curled up at her back, his face hidden between her shoulder blades like he is trying to hide from something. His arm is thrown over her side. 

Scully shifts accordingly in bed until she feels somewhat comfortable again, moving into the warm space Mulder has left on the mattress. He mumbles something in his sleep that sounds like her name and buries his face in her neck. She strokes his hair comfortingly until she falls back asleep. 


	3. Chapter 3

Mulder crawls into Scully's bed in the middle of the night for some childish attempt at comfort. 

He doesn't know why he didn't just go into the bedroom with Scully in the first place. Aside from the fact that he was scared to push too far, to cross the invisible lines they'd put back in place. Things have unmistakably changed now.  But it turns out he's more afraid to sleep alone. He woke up the first time in the middle of a nightmare, on the verge of crying out or screaming her name. He muffled any sounds he made in the skin of his upper arm, tears burning in his eyes. And then he decided that fuck it, there was no reason to put himself through this. Even if he isn't the father of Scully's baby, she clearly isn't showing any aversion to him being around—quite the opposite, actually. He saw the expression on her face when he said he'd sleep in the living room. So he went into her room and curled up behind her quietly, not wanting to wake her up. He didn't touch her too much because he didn't know if he should. He lay inches away from her and let himself fall asleep to her soft, easy breaths.

He wakes up again to the sound of a phone ringing, Scully pressed up against him. They must've gotten closer in his sleep again. 

She awakens groggily, blinking sleepily; he scoots back away from her on the bed, nervous as a teenager once again. “Mm, whosat?” she mumbles, rubbing at her eyes.

“Someone on your phone,” he mutters. 

Scully turns over with effort and reaches for the phone. “Scully,” she says in a groggy, professional voice. She listens for a moment before saying, “What?” in a stunned voice. 

Mulder rubs the sleep out of his eyes and sits up, watching her for signs of what happened. She looks surprised, maybe even a little scared.

“Is he okay?” Scully says in a panicked sort of voice, and then she huffs out a relieved sigh. “Oh, thank god. Do we know why he used Doggett?” She listens for a moment longer. “Okay. Well, I don't know if I can come in right away… all right. Tell him to call us—um, me. Tell him to call me if he needs anything.” Her face reddens a little in embarrassment. “Okay. Thank you, sir.” She hangs up the phone and lets it drop on the comforter. 

Mulder’s already feeling a tad irritated. “They found Agent Doggett?” he asks, plucking at the edge of the comforter. Good old Agent Doggett, his replacement.

Scully nods. “Absalom had taken Doggett hostage to break into the Federal Statistics Center. Skinner said it was something about looking for proof of… aliens… I'm not sure. But it doesn't matter now. They shot Absalom before he could get too far.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait.” A flicker of anger sparks in Mulder's mind. “He got Absalom  _ shot _ ? Did he survive?”

“Agent Doggett is fine, but I'm afraid that Absalom didn't make it…” 

“Son of a bitch!” Mulder is on his feet before she can say anything more, resisting the urge to hit the wall. His face is hot with fury. First his office, his life's work, his partner, and now this? Getting a lead on his abduction, a lead on this entire conspiracy killed? 

He never actually changed out of his clothes last night, so he storms out into the living room to retrieve his jacket and shoes. It's time he gave this Agent Doggett a piece of his mind.

“Mulder, what are you doing?” Scully protests, following him out into the living room. 

“Time to go back into work, Scully,” says Mulder, yanking on his shoes. “Time to stake my claim.”

“Mulder, you're being ridiculous! I know you wanted to find Absalom, and find out what he and Howard Salt were doing… but none of this is Doggett's fault.”

“Who says it's not?” Mulder knots his shoes quickly before getting to his feet and striding across the apartment. “Because I think Agent Doggett’s inexperience is  _ exactly _ what's going to take us down in the end, one way or another.” He grabs his wallet from the counter before shoving his way out of the apartment. 

“Mulder!” Scully calls out in protest, maybe even anger, but the door slams behind him before he can respond. 

He takes a taxi to the Bureau in a dizzy haze. He barely even knows why he is going until he gets there, barges into Skinner's office and shoves Doggett down. He shouts at Doggett about Absalom, but he's really thinking about the Files. About Scully.  _ You were there, _ he thinks furiously.  _ You were there, and I should've been there. _ He knows he should get down on his knees and thank Doggett for protecting his partner, but he finds himself unable to for completely selfish reasons.  _ You were there, _ he thinks furiously.  _ You. And I wasn't.  _

Doggett says, “You see this?” and motions to the wound on his cheek where they assumedly shot Absalom. Assumedly in defense of himself.

Mulder says, “I see you sitting there, Agent Doggett. That's good enough for me.”

And then he leaves. 

\---

Skinner calls Scully before Mulder does. She's sitting at the table having breakfast, and contemplating what the hell she's going to do next—because they can't go on like this. They can't go on with this distance between them and Mulder refusing to acknowledge the baby and Mulder running off on his own and Mulder getting furious every time Doggett's name is mentioned. She can't do this. So she's trying to figure out how the hell she's going to deal with this whole giant mess when the phone rings. It's Skinner. He tells her that Mulder stormed into his office and tried to start a fight with Doggett. That he blames Doggett for Absalom's death. 

 Scully groans a little, covering her face with one hand. “He's not taking this very well,” she mumbles into her hand. She doesn't know what the hell to do. 

“I didn't expect much differently,” Skinner says in a bitter sort of voice. “Have you heard from him?”

“Not since he left.” And she honestly has no idea when he's coming back.  _ If _ he's coming back. 

“I suggested he go home and cool off,” says Skinner. “I hope he'll take me up on it.”

Scully opens her mouth to say something else, but the beep that means she is getting another call sounds in her ear. “Sir, I have someone on the other line…” she starts. 

“Go ahead. It might be Mulder.” 

“Thank you, sir.” She switches the line over. “Scully.”

“Hey, Scully, it's me,” Mulder says on the other end, and it makes her feel warm with pleasure; she never thought she'd hear him say that again. 

But the rest of it comes to her quickly: the fact that he tried to start a fight with Doggett. “Mulder, Skinner called,” she says sternly. “He told me about your little stunt at the Bureau.”

“Scully, do you know how far back your Agent Doggett set this investigation by getting Absalom killed?”

“Mulder, he didn't get Absalom killed!” Scully snaps. “He was a  _ hostage.  _ None of it was under his control!”

“He should've been smarter about it,” Mulder says tensely on the other end. “He should've realized the importance of…” 

“You're being ridiculous and irrational, Mulder, and besides that, trying to start a fight with him won't help a thing. Do you understand? It's childish and irresponsible, and it won't get you any closer to having the X-Files back. In fact, it'll just give Kersh more excuses to stick you behind a desk.”

A long silence on the other end before Mulder says, “Whatever happened with Agent Dogget and Absalom, we still need to investigate Howard Salt further. You need to call the Gunmen and get them over there to break into that laptop. I'd call them myself, but I'm afraid I'd give them a heart attack.”

Scully shuts her eyes, rubbing them wearily. Maybe she should start her maternity leave early, like Skinner suggested, because all of this feels like too much right now. “Mulder, I called them after you woke up,” she says softly. “They were all overjoyed.”

“Could you call them again? Please?” Mulder’s voice is a little distracted, like he's preoccupied. “I'm leaving the Bureau in a little bit; I'm in the office looking for information.”

Scully chews at her lower lip. She thinks about the panicky feeling she'd gotten when Skinner called her earlier, and that was just Doggett who was in danger. She can't imagine if it was Mulder, having to go through that  _ again _ . Or if it was her… She has a responsibility now, she is a mother and she needs to protect the baby. And she doesn't think that Mulder would want her to pursue the lead, since he's seemed kind of protective of her since he’s been back anyway, but she doesn't want him to pursue it, either. If Doggett almost died for this, this thing that took Mulder away from her, than there's no guarantee that it won't take him again. And she can’t go through that a second time. “Mulder, maybe this isn't a good idea,” she whispers.

Caught off guard, Mulder says, “What? Why the hell isn't it?”

“I'm just saying that maybe it's too dangerous,” she says defensively. “I mean, look, Doggett almost got killed on this lead. And you just got back…”

Mulder sighs with annoyance. “Look, Scully, for all the ' _ I’m fine _ 's I've had to endure throughout our partnership, I think you can give me this, all right?”

Her face reddens with anger. “And what the hell does that mean?” she retorts harshly. 

Mulder sighs again, maybe a little upset, maybe a little helpless. “Look, just… I'll call the Gunmen. You could probably use some rest anyway.”

“Oh, no,” she snaps. “If you insist on going down this rabbit hole, I'm going to be there with you. I just wish that you'd consider everything, Mulder… what you've been through and how it affected the people in your life.” 

“I am considering, Scully,” Mulder snaps right back. “I'm considering the fact that I don't want this to happen again. I'm not going to stand around and dwell on it; I'm going to try and stop it.” 

Scully shuts her eyes again, swears under her breath. “If you insist, I'll call the Gunmen over here,” she says in a tight, weary voice, and Mulder hangs up on the other end. 

\---

The Gunmen seem excited to see Mulder, clustering around her kitchen table eagerly. Frohike rushes to answer the door, hugs Mulder in the doorway. Langly and Byers are right on his heels to greet Mulder. Scully is almost enjoying it all until Langly mentions their questions about Mulder’s involvement with—in his own words—a “certain blessed event,” complete with a head motion towards Scully. 

Scully looks at Mulder with a slight degree of expectation, but the look he gives in return is full of confusion, as if to ask,  _ What the hell are they talking about?  _ She decides to ignore that for the time being, says, “So much for playing a hunch, Mulder. The, uh, Gunmen were able to decrypt the data that you found on Howard Salt's hard drive. It was a series of file directories that were downloaded the day that he died.”

“Downloaded from where?” asks Mulder. 

“The FSC, the Federal Statistics Center,” Langly supplies.

“A government information bank used by the U.S. Census Bureau where your Mr. H. Salt worked,” Byers adds.

“All right, what are you waiting for, boys? Get cracking,” Mulder says. 

“Unless you think we're all idiots, it's only Langly who's the idiot,” Frohike says in a defensive, clarifying sort of way. 

“Don't make like it's my hacking skills, Frohike. I've never seen such a radical counterdefensive,” Langly protests.

Mulder looks so confused that Scully has to explain—they've been unable to find a way in, which she knows Mulder will be less than thrilled about. She says, “Fifteen minutes after Howard Salt was shot at the White House, firewalls went up on every data bank at that very facility.”

“Well, why do that?” Mulder asks. Frohike looks over at Scully with a wordless sort of confirmation, and Mulder continues with satisfaction: “Because I'm right. Because they would kill to protect what's in those files.”

Byers says reluctantly, “Unless you got a password, we don't see any way short of that of getting a hold of this data.”

“And the thing is, even if you have a pass code you still have to break into the FSC just to use it,” says Langly. There is an awkward pause; Mulder dips his head a little as if to say,  _ Out with it already. _ “We all agree, you're going to have to let this one go,” Langly finishes. 

“Oh,” Mulder says in a cold tone. “I see.” The Gunmen look away awkwardly; this is likely not what they were expecting from their reunion with Mulder. Scully honestly doesn't know whether to defend Mulder or comfort the Gunmen. And then Mulder adds in a snide voice that strikes true fury into Scully, “Somebody's been doing a little campaigning for her cause.”

She swallows back anger at the back of her throat and looks away. He's being unfair, he's being an asshole, this is Diana Fowley all over again except she was never fucking in love with Doggett. 

She just doesn't want him to get himself killed. Why the hell can't he see that? Why can't he understand? If their situation was reversed, she knows he would react similarly. For fuck’s sake, he wouldn't let her go into Oregon, and that's why they are in this whole goddamn mess.

“Well, just remember, boys,” Mulder finishes, “this is America. Just because you get more votes doesn't mean you win.”

He gives her a pointed look that she doesn't care to dissect. She's barely heard a word he's said. She looks away, her eyes stinging from anger or sadness—she isn't quite sure. “Look, I'm going to do this with or without your help,” Mulder says to the room as a whole. “I don't give a shit either way. But I’d really appreciate your support here.”

Frohike sighs, almost inaudibly. Byers says nothing. Scully crosses her arms over her chest, frustrated. “We're gonna need to find that password,” Langly says finally. 

\---

Mulder and the Gunmen spend a tense day holed up in her apartment, trying to further hack the FSC. Scully doesn't leave, for some reason. She'd go into work, but the manhunt is over and she highly doubts that taking on a new case with Doggett will help anything.

She doesn't leave, but she doesn't exactly help, either. She spends half of the day reading a book that Bill had sent her for Christmas. She calls her mom and expertly steers the conversation away from the subject of Mulder. She finishes painting the baby's room, because what the hell. She hates looking at it unfinished like that. She owes the baby this, at least.

The Gunmen take turns helping her when they're not needed in the kitchen, and they work in silence. She tries not to cry when she sees the star mobile in the corner.

Finally, the Gunmen leave. It's almost dark by the time they leave, but they're clearly done, fed up with the whole thing. Mulder refuses to quit. He moves to the couch with the laptop and continues to work on it. Scully finishes the book and starts another. She's still chock full of nervous energy, ready to burst. At one point, she flat-out asks, “Mulder, are you planning to stay overnight?”

He looks up from the laptop in surprise. “I-I’d thought I might,” he says uncertainly, “but if you want, I can…”

“No, it's fine,” says Scully, although she isn't sure anymore. She doesn't want him to leave, but she doesn't know that she wants him to stay. She still misses him, in a way, which is ridiculous because he's right there. But she does. “I'm just… itching to get out of the apartment for a while, and I thought I might could go by and pick some things up for you if you're staying. Check on the fish.”

His mouth opens, closes. He says, “That sounds good. Do you want me to…”

“No, I've got it,” Scully says coarsely, already reaching for her keys and her jacket. It's strangely cold for Virginia in April. 

“Hey, Scully?” She's already halfway out the door when he speaks, so she has to turn. “I'm sorry,” he says. “About…” 

It feels like they've done this routine too much in the past few days, and Scully, for one, is tired of it. “Don't worry about it, Mulder,” she says, and walks out, closing the door firmly behind her. At least she can still do that.

She doesn't make it to Mulder's apartment, though; she decides to take a cab instead of drive on an impulse, and she meets Doggett on the curb. He has information for Mulder: information on Absalom, the password he's been looking for all damn day. He wants Scully to give it to Mulder. 

Scully doesn't get in her cab. What the hell is she supposed to do now? Giving Mulder this information will make him feel better, will be relieving. It might even help other people. But if she gives it to him, he might die. He might get hurt. They might open up a can of worms they can't close. It's too soon. She can't risk it. But she should, she should be willing to. She is his partner. 

She wrestles with it in the elevator, all the way up to her apartment. When she enters, Mulder looks up at her in surprise. “Scully, what are you doing back?” he asks. She says nothing, genuinely unsure of what to do. It still feels strange after six months, coming into her apartment and seeing him there.

In the brief silence, Mulder gets to his feet and crosses the room to meet her. “Did something just happen?” he asks. 

“I'm, um… I'm not exactly sure I should tell you, Mulder,” she says helplessly. 

“Scully, if you know something that can get us moving forward again, you need to tell me,” he says in a gentle but firm voice. 

She breathes uneasily, on the verge of tears. She hates that she is on the verge of tears, she hates crying, and she's done so much of it lately. She doesn’t want to tell him because she doesn’t feel like she can protect him and she needs to make sure she doesn’t lose him again. Mulder tips his chin towards her slightly in a movement somewhere between expectant and pleading. She sighs, rubbing a hand over her face. “Agent Doggett just spoke to me,” she says slowly, reluctantly. “He told me of the man who was shot at the White House. That he was trying to deliver a disk to the president… and that the disk had the password on it.”

Mulder’s eyebrows raise. “The one we’ve been looking for all day?” She nods. “Did Agent Doggett know what it was?” he asks at length.

Scully sighs again, her shoulders slumping. “Fight the future.”

Mulder’s eyes light up a little bit; he spins on his heel and rushes to the kitchen counter. “Fight the future?” he asks, tearing off a scrap of paper and grabbing for a pen. Scully nods. Mulder scribbles the three words down in a rush, chuckles quietly to himself. “This is it, Scully, this is what we’ve been looking for! I need to call the Gunmen.”

Her mouth gapes a little bit. “Mulder, you're not saying you want to break in  _ tonight _ ?” She shouldn't have come back up. She could've hidden it better if she'd gone to his apartment instead. She feels like a fool, a goddamn idiot.

“Time is of the essence, Scully. The more time we spend sitting around, the more time they have to erase the evidence.” Mulder rummages for the phone and begins dialing. 

Scully feels like the whole damn thing is happening too fast. Mulder steps out into the hallway to talk to the Gunmen, and on an impulse, she yanks out her cell phone and dials Skinner. She doesn't know how else to stop this. She tells him that Mulder has gotten a password that will access information stored at the FSC. She tells him that she's worried that he's going to get himself killed doing this. Again. Skinner suggests that she attempt to talk him out of it, and that's about as far as the conversation gets. Mulder is in the living room before she knows it, rambling on about supplies and such, and telling her that the Gunmen will be there in twenty minutes. He doesn't question the phone call she's on. Scully hangs up. 

They end up asking to borrow her car, Mulder and the cluster of very reluctant Gunmen. Even though Scully has been going back and forth in her mind over the whole thing, she is sure of one thing only: he's not going without her. 

Concern that is bordering on annoyance for her—why is he so concerned for her but not himself, why does he seem worried about the baby when it's in danger but uninterested the rest of the time?—flickers across Mulder's face when she declares that if they want the car, they'll have to take her with it. “Scully, I don't want to put you in danger…” he starts anxiously, almost apologetically.

“I'll drive,” says Scully tensely. “I'm not letting you go alone, Mulder.”  _ Not again. Never again. _

Mulder doesn’t argue anymore. They pack up their equipment and head out towards where Scully has parked her car.

They’ve just pulled out of the parking space when Mulder speaks up in a tentative voice. “You should stay in the car,” he says carefully. “I don’t want you and your… the kid to get hurt.”

Scully blinks hard, staring straight out the windshield. The headlights in the distance blur like stars. Most of the things Mulder has said to her since his return only make her angry, but every time he insinuates that the baby is only hers, it’s a struggle not to cry.

“You could be like the getaway driver,” Langly pipes up from the backseat. “Totally badass.”

“We can leave you a gun or something,” Frohike adds.

Scully blinks twice more, but a tear rolls down her cheek anyways. It’s on the side facing the window; she prays that no one can tell. “That was my plan anyway,” she says faintly. She thinks of the baby, what she’d do to protect it. She’s noticed that Mulder feels somewhat protective of the baby, even though he clearly doesn’t think it’s his. 

Mulder nods a little, as if trying to encourage her. She ignores him. 

\---

The break-in goes just about as disastrously as anyone would expect. Doggett shows up insisting that Mulder is in danger and goes in after him. Scully is left waiting nervously outside of the facility, white-knuckling the steering wheel. And then she sees the cavalry: a cluster of military vehicles pulling up. She calls the Gunmen to get Mulder out of there, her heart thudding too hard the entire time. 

It feels like forever. The military goes in and doesn't come out. Jammed in the car with nowhere else to go, Scully's frantic breaths sound too loud to her own ears. The baby thrusts an elbow out, and she blinks back tears. She can't go through this again. She doesn’t want to lose Mulder, she doesn’t want Doggett or the Gunmen to get themselves killed. She can't imagine telling the baby, _ I got your father back and then I lost him again _ . She is irresponsible, so fucking irresponsible; she tries to talk herself into driving away, for the baby’s sake, but finds herself unable to leave them. She’d told Doggett she wouldn’t leave Mulder, that she couldn’t do that to him.

The Gunmen arrive at the car first, piling into the back like overeager dogs, bickering quietly amongst themselves. Scully turns to press her face against the window, but sees no sign of Mulder or Doggett. “Where are they?” she demands, turning back to face the Gunmen. 

All three of them turn to face her, their faces showing equal states of worry. “I… advised that they hide in the ceiling to avoid detection,” Byers says nervously. “I assume they're still in there.”

Her heart is pounding too hard; the baby is skittish, too, moving a lot inside of her as if he can feel her fear. She swallows back her fear and looks back over her shoulder. No Mulder.

“We didn't hear any gunshots,” Frohike offers reassuringly.

“We have every reason to assume they got out okay,” Langly adds. 

_ And we have every reason to assume they didn't. _ Scully covers her face with her hands, screws her eyes shut. “This was a bad idea,” she mumbles. 

Frohike pats her free hand sympathetically. Normally, she'd thank him, but her mind is racing at a million miles an hour. Byers is trying to radio Mulder, the static too loud in the quiet car. The baby kicks. Scully rubs a hand over her eyes again and turns around to face the steering wheel. She wants to scream. 

“Scully,” says Langly from the backseat, tapping her on the shoulder. She turns to look at her, and he points out the window. She looks; there are two dark figures near the building, darting away from it. One breaks off and runs in another direction; the other runs straight towards the car. Scully breathes a sigh of relief. She starts the car as soon as Mulder bursts into the passenger seat, breathing hard. “Are you okay?” she asks quietly, and he nods, wiping sweat off of his forehead.

Yards away, Doggett’s car starts. She hits her gas pedal.

\---

Mulder supposes that he underestimated Agent Doggett. Instead of setting him up, the man had shown up to save him—an unexpected move, Mulder would've said, after he'd been such an asshole to him earlier. Maybe Doggett is a good man, the way that Scully said. Mulder still has his doubts about Doggett running the X-Files, but he is grateful to the other man for both of their lives, his and Scully's. 

(When they are crawling through the ceiling tiles, trying to find a way out of the building, Mulder mutters a begrudging thank-you to Agent Doggett. Every time he thinks about what could've happened to Scully while he was gone, the idea of returning from his abduction and finding out that she'd died, he feels sick to his stomach. Scully is capable of taking care of herself, of course, but even she has admitted that Doggett is the reason she's still here. And he is truly thankful for that, even if he can’t give Doggett credit for much else. 

“For what, Agent Mulder?” Doggett replies with some annoyance behind him, in a hushed voice in case the soldiers are still below them. “For saving your life? Because it ain't saved yet.”

“There's no guarantee those soldiers didn't follow you here, even if they would've killed you, too,” Mulder hisses, even if he realizes that isn't true. “No. Not for this. For saving Agent Scully's life.”

Doggett is silent behind him as they keep crawling across the tiles. And then: “She's my—We were partners. That's what partners do. She saved my life a couple times, too, you know.”

Mulder grimaces, just a little bit, wants to snap at him that Scully is  _ his  _ partner. Thinks about Scully in pain, in danger, and that is all it takes. “Well, still. Thank you,” he says sharply. That is all he'll give Doggett. That is it. But still, he thinks it must be better than nothing.)

He and Doggett part ways outside the facility, and he runs straight to the car where Scully and the Gunmen are waiting. They all seemed relieved that he is okay, but there's another emotion layered under Scully's relief. Something like annoyance.

Scully is quiet on the ride home. Too quiet. The Gunmen chatter anxiously until Scully drops them off at her apartment where their van is parked. Mulder explains to them what happened with Doggett, the things he told him; when he tells them that Doggett said they'd be killed if they were caught, he sees Scully flinch harshly. He pretends he doesn't see it, but he does, and it makes his stomach turn. As irritated as he'd been with her for repeatedly saying that he shouldn't do this, it's clear that she had her reasons.  

Scully takes him back to his apartment. When he questions it, she says simply, shortly, “You don't have anything at my apartment.” He doesn't say anything because he doesn't know what to say. He doesn't want her to leave (the nightmares and the fear gets worse when he is alone), but he can't exactly ask her to stay. He rubs at his temples in the passenger seat, his eyes closed in frustration. All that's happened tonight, and he has nothing to show for it. No evidence. He's hurt Scully. This whole fucking thing was very clearly a mistake, how could he have thought it was a good idea?

Scully rides up with his apartment with him, opens the door with her key like they're redoing the other day when she brought him home. Mulder slinks off into his bedroom; it's late and he's entirely too exhausted. He's halfway expecting Scully to just leave, and he doesn't know what he could say that would stop her. But she follows him into the bedroom, stands stiffly in the doorway. “Hey, Scully,” he says in a half-weary voice, straightening the covers on his bed. First time he's slept there in six months, he realizes. 

Scully swallows, giving him a firm, unyielding look. “We can't keep doing this.”

His jaw works back and forth. “Can't keep doing what?” 

She laughs in bitter frustration. “Mulder, in the past few days, you've made reckless decisions and put yourself in danger, you've been outwardly hostile and unfair to Agent Doggett, and, let's face it, you've been sort of horrible to me as well. We can't keep going on like this. We need to talk about it.”

“Scully, what is there to talk _about_?” he snaps, even though another part of his mind is insistent: _She's been through a lot, you need to go easy on her._ It doesn't feel like he is saying these things, like he is actually speaking. “Things changed while I was gone. I get that. But sooner or later, things will…”

“You almost got yourself  _ killed _ tonight,” she snaps, her face white as a sheet, and he closes his mouth just before he could say,  _ Go back to normal.  _ Maybe they never will go back to normal. “Do you realize what that would have done to me? Do you have any  _ idea _ what we've done to save your life, and you're ready to just throw it away?”

“But I didn't die, at least not  _ this  _ time. I'm fine. I made it out,” he snaps right back. “I suppose both of us owe our lives to Agent Doggett now…” 

Scully is tense, hands curling into fists by her side. “That is not the goddamn point, Mulder.”

“Well, what is it?” he snaps. “What is the goddamn point, Scully? I’ve been hurt a hundred times before and I’ve still investigated cases! Hell, you were pissed that you couldn’t work in the field after you were diagnosed with cancer! You kept working cases when you were  _ dying _ , Scully; you were in danger, too, and the difference here is that I am in perfect health.” 

“This is different,” she whispers, furious.

“How? How is it so different? I was worried about you, Scully; I was watching you die every damn day and you wouldn’t slow down! Do you know how many days I was worried were going to be your last? Do you know the cases I let slide by because I didn’t want to put too much strain on you? And god forbid I express my concerns, because the untouchable Dana Scully can’t let anyone take care of her. It doesn’t matter what anyone else is thinking or feeling…”  

“This is fucking different,” she shouts. Mulder is momentarily silenced and so she keeps going, barreling through him like a freight train. “You watched me die, Mulder? I  _ buried _ you. I was in love with you, and I buried you. I watched you go into the goddamn ground. I found you cold and stiff in a field and I knew there was nothing I could do to bring you back.”

Mulder swallows against the building lump in his throat. He doesn't want to hear about this. “Scully…” he tries.

“You want to know what it was like? I found out you’d been abducted about twenty minutes after I found out I was pregnant, and all I could think about is that I had to find you. I ran all over the goddamn country to try and find you. I wouldn’t let them have the X-Files because I thought if I did that they wouldn’t let me find you.” She laughs bitterly, wiping under her eyes. “Doggett was a good partner but he wasn’t exactly… open to the paranormal cases that the X-Files deal with, so I tried to fill your fucking place. I almost fucking died in the Utah desert because a cult shoved a fucking slug they worshipped up my back. I ended up in the hospital because I thought they’d done something to my baby, that it wasn’t… human.” She swallows hard. Mulder can feel his hands shaking; he shoves them in his pockets. His mind is racing with questions he doesn't know how to ask. How did she get pregnant, what happened to her? (She found out after his abduction, does that mean…) Is the baby okay? Did they hurt the baby because he wasn't here to protect them? He wants to ask, but he can't find the words. He wants to hug her more than ever. 

“I tried so hard to  _ be  _ you, to fill your empty space on the Files, Mulder… and it wasn’t enough,” Scully says softly, tearfully. “You still died. I couldn’t save you. I buried you and I tried to move on… do you even know how hard that was? Do you know how many nights I spent in your bed because it made me feel safe, as opposed to how on edge I felt every other minute of the goddamn day? I couldn’t leave your apartment and I fed your goddamn fish and I prayed for a goddamn miracle every night. And I got it.”

He is crying. He realizes that in the moment. Scully looks down at her shoes. A tear drips down her face. “I can’t expect you to be anything other than yourself,” she mumbles. “God, I wouldn’t  _ want _ that. But, Mulder… you just got back. And I am not burying you again.”

The words make his stomach clench, make him feel sick. He needs to apologize, she needs to understand, and he barely even knows what he is saying anymore. “Scully, I don't know what you want me to do,” he says. “I know you… went through a lot. I can't imagine. But what do you… I come back, with all these things that have happened to me… things I don't understand… and I've clearly missed out on things, because here you are about to have a baby, and that's  _ fine _ , but I… I need to understand this. I need to understand… everything.” What happened to him, what did Doggett do while he was gone, what did they do to Scully. Is the baby his. Is the baby his.

Scully doesn't look up, her jaw clenching. “That’s what I thought,” she says fiercely. Mulder swallows, searches for something comforting to say, but he can think of nothing. No excuses. “Do you know what the worst part is?” she hisses suddenly, angry, fists clenching harder. “It’s the fact that you were dying for goddamn months beforehand and you never said a thing. I’m halfway convinced you don’t give a damn about your life, Mulder, or how it affects the people around you.” She pauses, continues shakily, her hand ghosting over her rounded abdomen: “Maybe you wouldn’t have left if you did.”

And then she turns around and leaves the bedroom, the door snicking shut quietly. It is almost worse than a slam.

Mulder stands still, hands clenched awkwardly in the fabric of his jacket pockets. He stands until he can move without getting sick. He goes into the bathroom and gets under the heavy warm stream of the shower. The warmth feels like a shock to his system, a wake-up call. He doesn't know what to do. Tears drip down his face.

When he comes out, he can't hear Scully in the other room. He crawls into bed, stiff and sore. He lies still, trying to forget everything, the fight, but Scully’s words keep coming back to him. He feels like he is falling apart from the inside out.

He doesn't know what to do. He truly doesn't know what to do. He left, and now he's back, and he doesn't know if he can be who Scully needs him to be. Agent Doggett clearly isn't who he thought he was, but he doesn't know if he can leave the Files in his hands. He doesn't know how to leave behind the truth of his abduction, hanging over him like a thick fog. Scully found out she was pregnant after he'd been abducted. He doesn't know what that means. He doesn't know what to do. 

He buries his face in his pillow and falls into a restless sleep. 

\---

His dreams are the same he's been having for months. They're hurting him, cutting into him, torturing him. They're burying him, he can't breathe. They're hurting Scully, Scully and her baby, and she's pleading with him to help her but he can't, he can't even help himself, and it hurts so much. 

He wakes up screaming her name, the way he used to on the ship, and it doesn't matter because he isn't here to see it. He curls into a protective ball on the mattress, breathing hard. He's crying again; he wipes his face, lying his cheek flat on the bed. The sheets smell like Scully.

He decides in a split second to get up and make some coffee, try to clear his head. Try to figure things out. Maybe call Scully and apologize, apologize again and again. But when he sits up in bed, he finds Scully standing in the doorway, as if she'd heard his calls and materialised in his apartment. She stands there somewhat gingerly, watching him with soft eyes as if trying to gauge where or not to say anything to him. “Mulder,” she whispers gently, drawing slowly closer to the bed.

“You came back?” he croaks, throat raw as he stumbles to his feet. He honestly can't believe it. After the things they said to each other, he honestly never thought… 

She comes to stand in front of him, her cheeks smeared with tear tracks and her eyes red. She's pale, her face filled with worry, and she reaches out with one hand to touch his arm. “I never left,” she says softly.

He isn't sure who reaches for who first; all he knows is that in a matter of seconds, the two of them are wrapped around each other. Scully is clutching him hard, her face buried in his shoulder, her arms around his neck; he is quivering in her grasp, trying to hold back tears. And then he feels the baby kick against him and he can't help it; he chokes out a helpless sob into her hair. She hugs him harder, whispering his name against his collarbone. “I'm sorry,” he whispers brokenly, rocking her back and forth. “I'm so sorry.”

“I'm sorry, too,” she whispers back. “Mulder, I thought I could save you, and I… I couldn't. I failed you.”

He shakes his head, holding onto her tremblingly. They stumble backwards together, landing in a tangle on the bed, and he holds her tighter. “I'm sorry,” Scully chokes out, burrowing into him, and he shakes his head again, kisses her face again and again in some desperate way to make her understand. He doesn't blame her, he could never. Anything he thought that she had done in his absence is clearly not the case. He will blame everyone but her. He needs her more than air. He has too many things to apologize for, and she is the one thing he cannot lose.

She tips her chin upwards and kisses him hard on the mouth, warm and salty from the tears dripping down both of their faces. She kisses his temple, his nose, his cheek where the scars are barely visible, rubs the marked skin with her thumb.

He kisses her on the mouth again tremblingly, tucking hair behind her ears. “Scully?” He cups the side of her face, kisses her forehead. He hears her voice again:  _ I found out you’d been abducted about twenty minutes after I found out I was pregnant,  _ and knows what he has to ask. “How far along are you?” He has to know, has to know if it's true.

She covers his hand with hers, blinking up at him tearily. “Seven and a half months,” she whispers. 

Seven and a half months. Which means that she had been pregnant when she'd been sick in Oregon, when she'd crashed to the ground, when she'd held that baby and he'd told her there was more than this. There is so much more, and he should've stayed with her. He wishes he'd stayed with her and never left. There is so much more coming. They have a future. He doesn't know what that future will be, but they do have a future. “Seven and a half months?” he whispers incredulously. 

She nods. “It's yours,” she whispers, her head falling against his chest. “It's yours, it's yours.”

Tears rush to his eyes all at once and he presses his nose into the top of her head. “It's mine?” he whispers, and she nods. “I'm a father?”

“Yes,” Scully chokes out, and she's laughing waterily into his chest. “You're a father. We're parents, Mulder.”

He laughs, too, a frightened, shaky laugh into her hair. He can't believe it. He feels the same nervous jolt in his chest that he felt when he saw Scully in the hospital, but it feels different now. It feels like anxious excitement. He can't believe it. 

Scully reaches down and takes his hand, pulls it gently to her stomach. He feels a flutter under his hand: soft, and then harder. He makes a small noise, and Scully laughs again. The baby kicks again and he laughs, too; he kisses Scully's face again, sloppily and eagerly. “Scully,” he mumbles, and she leans into him again. “Why didn't you tell me sooner?” he half-laughs, rubbing his nose against her neck. 

“I didn't think you were ready to hear it,” Scully whispers. “Or… I thought that you already knew and you… weren't ready to face it. I don't know.”

“I didn't know,” he says into her neck. “I thought you had… tried the IVF again, or moved on, or…”

Scully sniffles against his chest and shakes her head in a furious sort of way. He rocks her back and forth in a knot of arms and legs. “I wouldn't have,” she whispers harshly. “I missed you so much, Mulder, you don't even… I should've told you it was yours sooner.”

“I think there was a lot of things we should've done differently,” he says. The baby kicks again, under the starfish shape of his palm, and he tucks his face further against her neck. “I can't believe this,” he whispers, but he is smiling. “You're really… We're really…” Scully nods. “What do you mean earlier, when you said… you thought it wasn't human…”

“The baby's okay,” Scully says quickly, pulling back to look at him. A tear rolls down her cheek, and he thumbs it away. “I was afraid that… It's a long story, but I had my doctor check. It's a doctor I trust. The baby is okay.” Her hand presses against his jaw, her fingers cradling his cheek. “The baby is _ ours _ ,” she says. 

He kisses her again, fiercely. “I'm sorry,” he whispers into her mouth, and she shakes her head. She curls up against him, her head against his chest, her ear pressed over his beating heart. He strokes her hair, wraps his arms around her again and says, “I'm sorry.” 

“It’s okay. We'll figure it out, it's okay,” she says into his shirt. “You're  _ here _ , Mulder. You're here.”

He's here. He presses a kiss to the top of her head and shuts his eyes. 

\---

When they'd told her she was pregnant in the hospital, her knuckles white around the blanket and her mind full of worry for Mulder and worry for herself, she hadn't believed it. And then when they had done the ultrasound and she'd seen it, heard the heartbeat pulsing through the room, it had seemed impossible that she hadn't known all along. The nausea, the fatigue, the nosebleed she'd had the night before and hadn't told Mulder about. She'd missed a period a month ago, but her periods had been somewhat irregular since her abduction anyways, and besides that, she thought it was  _ impossible. _

But then again, they dealt in the impossible. Mulder would believe it, she told herself, even if it was impossible. And for a few golden minutes, she'd forgotten the danger. Convinced herself that he was fine, the Gunmen had gotten to him, he'd be back in minute. She lay a hand over her flat stomach, propped up in the hospital bed, and imagined telling him. The thought of it made her smile: everything they'd wanted a year ago had happened, and it scared her because she didn't know how the hell they were going to do this, but it was happening. They were going to have a baby.

When the Gunmen had told her, their voices choked with regret and apology, the only thing she could think of was that if she only had told him about the nosebleed, he wouldn't have gone. He would’ve taken her straight to the hospital and then they could've found out together. He'd almost changed his mind when she vomited that morning, but she shook her head, wouldn't let him stay back just for her. She shouldn't have let him go. 

(She'd kissed him in the doorway, or he kissed her, she can't remember. And then she'd given him her cross. Some sort of moment of weakness, an attempt to stay connected with him. She hated that he wouldn't agree to her going, she hated sending him out alone with Skinner. He looked down at the necklace in surprise when she dropped it into his palm, looked back up at her. “It's silly,” she said softly, “but…”

“It's not silly,” he said raspily, closed his fingers around the cross and kissed her again. He'd taken it, and she'd been so grateful for that, at the very least. He had worn it during her abduction; the circle felt complete, then. She wanted a part of her to be with him, and  _ that _ was silly, but she didn't care.)

(Later, when they'd found him in Montana, they'd given her the cross back. The only personal effect they'd found on him.)

Throughout his abduction, she had imagined moments like this. Moments after she told him she was pregnant, after she had him back. (Because she  _ would _ find him. She had to find him.) Later, after they found him dead, she hadn't thought about things like this because it seemed impossible, but before. Before, these are the kinds of things she would imagine.

They lay entertwined in the blankets together. She is holding on too tightly to him and he doesn't seem to mind. He's half-asleep, his head on her shoulder, his hand on her stomach. She kisses the top if his head, curled up against him. He mumbles her name, rubs a soft circle on her stomach. It's still dark, but the sun will be rising soon. It's been a long night. 

She still can't believe she has him back. She thought she would, and then she thought it was impossible. But they deal in the impossible. Impossible resurrections, impossible children. He is here, and so is she, and it should be impossible, but here they are. All these impossibilities. She still can't believe she has him back.


End file.
